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This little boy? Knows the difference between a baler, a swather, and a combine. He also knows the difference between a Dixon harrow, a disc, and a plow. And corrects me if I am wrong!

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Testing

Just seeing if I have finally figured out this blogging from an iPad thing. Is this working? Did my picture print? Here's hoping!

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dinner

Do you ever have days where nothing goes as planned and all of a sudden it is five 'o' clock and everyone is hungry and you don't have any idea what to make for dinner? I do, and today was one of them. What was supposed to be a half hour meeting with the nursing supervisor at my mother's assisted living facility turned in to four hours spent getting my mom taken care of.  Five 'o' clock found me staring vacantly in to an empty refrigerator, wishing we could just eat out. However, with six children, eating out becomes expensive, and since I love to cook, we save eating out for treats or true emergencies.

Taking stock of what I did have, I decided to do some experimenting. I had Italian parsley, mint, and pine nuts in the fridge. I found two pounds of the same type of pasta (a small miracle!), and while that was cooking, I made the herbs and pine nuts in to a pesto, adding garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a small amount of cumin. I roasted cherry tomatoes with fresh thyme, kosher salt, olive oil, pepper, and a dash of dried chili peppers. The package of Italian sausage links (which would have fed Graham alone) I sliced up and sauteed, and also sliced up and sauteed zucchini with rosemary, salt, and ghee. So, we ended up with pasta with really yummy pesto, topped with sausage and roasted tomatoes, and sauteed zucchini (you wouldn't believe how many time I had to respell that word to get it right....) . Despair to delight in just half an hour. Why is it that the meals I just throw together using what ever I have on hand are always delicious? I don't know the answer to that one, but I do know that this meal was easy, and inexpensive. It was a good reminder that home cooked food really is better tasting and more affordable than restaurant or pre-packaged food. Neither of those things are bad, and I have certainly relied on them as needed. But sometimes, we come to rely on these things so much that we forget that with a little creativity and forethought, dinner can be quick, healthy, inexpensive, and really tasty. It was a reminder I needed.

I would have taken a picture of our meal, the roasted tomatoes and emerald green pesto really were lovely, but my family always looks at me askance when I start dashing about the table photographing food as they are waiting to eat it! If I take pictures in the kitchen before taking the food to the table, I can hear long-suffering sighs and subtle hints as to just how hungry every one is, and "Gee- wouldn't it be great if we could eat soon?" kind of comments. So, enjoy the lovely garden scene and remember that leftover bundles of herbs can save dinner!

Evening walk

Cleaning the picking machine

 Our evening walk consisted of eating a lot of yummy fruit! We sampled the last of the raspberries,

 found a very juicy plum (the only plum of this particular variety, too bad as it was delicious!),

 and ate an apple from the first tree to have ripe fruit. These are, I believe, the Lubsk apples.

 On our way home, we spotted the lovely moon rising over the Cascades. We watched it rise, and then I snapped a picture or two. As it peeked over the Cascades, the moon was a deep, glowing orange. This has been one of the first evening walks I have taken in a while, and I was very happy to witness the moon rising tonight- it was truly spectacular.

This kitty accompanied us, frisking on ahead of us if we were too slow, and coming back and weaving himself in and out of our legs if we stopped. He was on the constant alert for mice or grasshoppers! I discovered that our crab apples are ripe, which adds another item to my lengthy to-do list. I have a recipe for making pectin from crab apples that I have been wanting to try. Although this is rather low on my list of priorities, I want to make a real effort to try this. Sounds intriguing, and as I have had to make two emergency trips to the store (so far) to buy more pectin, the idea of having lots on hand in jars is very appealing! If I get around to doing this, I am sure I will be posting pictures as my recipe says the pectin in jars is beautiful!

thoughts on photography

I finally, after about eighty attempts, got a decent picture of a hummingbird and a butterfly in our garden.I just bought a telephoto lens, and have been having fun figuring out how to use it. The garden is full of beauty and inspiration right now, and actually getting these pictures felt like winning a prize. Have you ever tried to capture a hummingbird on film? You just focus in on them and they go buzzing away. Or, their little wings beat so very quickly that all of your pictures are blurry. Same goes for butterflies, but they seem to flit about with an effortless grace, as opposed to a hummingbirds nervous energy.

I always enjoy taking pictures. I have had no lessons (other than a free "learn to use you camera" class) and have no photo editing software. I am certainly not a professional, and am very grateful for digital photography which allows me to erase my many bad pictures.

One thing I have just come to realize is that sometimes I get so caught up in getting a good picture that I don't truly notice and enjoy the moment. This evening, a warm breeze was blowing, the garden was sweetly scented, my children begged me to run races with them, and the sun was shining golden on the Cascades- a truly lovely evening. I was so busy trying to catch a good picture of the hummingbird that I didn't really step back and enjoy the evening, or watch the humming birds play or just sit down and rest. Tomorrow evening, I think I will make a date with the garden, and leave my camera inside!

summer vegetables

We are moving in to peak produce season, with zucchini, beans, cucumbers, carrots, beets, and a few tomatoes available. I don't can many vegetables, preferring them fresh from the garden. I do pickle some beets and can tomatoes, maybe freeze some corn, but that is about it. I have cookbooks full of recipes using fresh vegetables-salads, quiches, vegeterian burritos, and so on. However, no matter how good those recipes sounds, I have yet to make one. I have discovered that (in my humble opinion) fresh vegetable are best one of two ways: Sauteed lightly in browned butter, or roasted with olive oil, coarse salt, fresh pepper, and several sprigs of fresh thyme. So simple, and very delicious. Everything is better with browned butter on it! The past few weeks, I have been sauteeing a mixture of potatoes, beans, zucchini, and carrots, then adding tomatoes at the end. With grilled chicken and a salad, a loaf of freshly baked bread, and cherry buttermilk cake or fresh berries with honey creme anglaise, summer meals are tasty and inexpensive!

I am attempting a post from my iPad.. It is very easy to use, but I can't for the life of me get it to upload a picture! I will have to play with it some more when I have more patience! Around the farm not much has changed. Blueberries are in full swing, as are kotata blackberries. I have decided on Wednesday as my big jelly making day, and I am hoping to get through a whole year's worth in a day. We will see how that goes! This evening I took the three youngest farm children to visit my mother. She was charming as ever, and knew who we were, which is always a good sign. Her dementia has progressed a little more rapidly in the last few months, and so I am always grateful when she knows who we are. She loves to come and walk through the garden and pick blueberries, so I will try to bring her out this week. She has taken to doing imitations which amuse my girls to no end, her favorite being an angry dog. So, if you are on the farm this week and hear an angry dog, do not fear, it is likely my mother amusing my girls. I made a delicious cherry buttermilk cake yesterday, and we demolished it in moments. I will post the recipe soon, but I need to figure out where I found the recipe first so I can give credit where credit is due. The two youngest farm children sat in front of the new oven and watched the cake bake. they were mesmerized, and I can't blame them. I got a certain amount of joy from clicking on the oven light and seeing my lovely cake baking! Our old oven light ceased to work years ago, so my children have never gotten to watch things bake. Simple joys, right? Still no luck on the picture, so I will end my musings and figure out my menu plan for the upcoming week. I need to make sure we are eating a lot of the vegetables that are ripe in the garden now!